But now I'm struggling to find motivation to do my work. I have absolutely no interest in leading a team, but senior members in my org keep trying to groom me into a TL. I like being an IC and building what I'm told to build; I have no idea how to decide what it is we should be building and don't want to deal with customer demands.
What I feel like I'd really rather do is quit and join a team working on something low stakes. Somewhere where I can put the minimum effort and still impress. I think this would be better for my mental health.
But it's a hard pill to give up the FAANG compensation. Also being stuck in a NIH company has atrophied my "real world" tech stack knowledge, so it's harder to market myself (especially now that the job market is saturated with laid off SWEs).
Any advice for jumping ship from FAANG?
Outside of Google-type companies, people write code to serve a direct business need which means the impressive software engineers are not the people who write good code but rather the software engineers who can use technology to benefit the business — which sometimes means writing code, but often does not.
If you go to a smaller company, even in a software engineering role, even as an individual contributor, expect to spend a lot less time having fun programming and a lot more time solving business problems.
You can absolutely coast in a low stakes environment at a smaller company, but don’t expect that being able to write Google-quality code will impress anyone. At a pragmatic company, people are more impressed by whatever benefits the bottom line. If you’re not a natural at the business side of things, it’ll be much more challenging to impress at a small company than it would be to impress at Google.
A few months ago I was the engineer supporting a new ask from marketing, after listening to their requests and evaluating what tools we had I wrote exactly 0 lines of code and we launched on time and without issues in part because I figured out how to use the levers we'd build into existing systems to do what they needed. It's engineering work but not development work.
Outside FAANGs there's more focus on contributing to success than simply contributing LOC. (I left where I was in part because I felt I was penalized for finding efficient ways to do things rather than churning out LoC)
The role you are describing might be different to an engineer.
Sure a good engineer avoids unnecessary coding but having done that they have to be seen to do some necessary coding (or necessary work like architecture, security, devops etc.)
Most small companies think in job titles and roles as an anchor but you may wear other hats sure.
The OP should not underestimate the value of having a voice in the room when business decisions are made. A lot of programmers have to implement systems specified by MBAs they never meet.
I hate meetings and prefer to spend all my time coding, but having a great working relationship with management allows me to steer my projects in a direction where I will enjoy building them.
You are dead right about code quality, nobody in the business world cares.
This post by phphphphp nails it so much in every area I've been exposed to, which is most areas of every company I've worked with (mostly as in-house counsel for 14 years), that I just had to chime in with support for the message.
Solving problems is the most valuable skill you can contribute. If you use it, you will be valued.
- Move to 2nd tier, lower cost of living city. My hidden gem: Chicago. Public transit, plenty of housing, culture, arts, #1 food city in the US, international airport with flights everywhere, half the housing cost and 3/4th other expenses as NYC and SF. 2nd option is Philadelphia for the same reasons and proximity to NYC for the weekend trips or to go into the office.
- Take a pay cut working at a financial, industrial, retail company as a cog while enjoying a stable 9-5. Lots of options remote and local with the resume you have.
- Work on side projects, hobbies. Decompress.
I wouldn't worry about your skills with "real world" tech stacks. It's straight forward to pick up.
Edit: I know calling one of the largest cities in the US a hidden gem is odd, but tech and Chicago / Philly? Not often considered.
- availability
- quality
- diversity
Others agree:
https://www.bonappetit.com/story/chicago-restaurant-city-of-... (a little bias here’s another one: https://travel.usnews.com/rankings/best-foodie-destinations-...)
You can do a quick search for more recent opinions.
NYC has more top end, famous restaurants. Chicago has more close to top end restaurants that you can easily get a reservation for. Measured by dimensions like # of Michelin stars, Chicago is only behind NYC and SF. It’s ahead LA for example.
Get a Corporate job in a big old school industry/traditional company (e.g manufacturing) where you are just a number. Trick is to find a team where work is minimal. FAANG and startups are out
2nd best bet is to find a Mid sized small business where they don't have much IT but just about enough where you could become a key IC doing 9-5 with minimal pressure. Tech is not their main business.
- Notorious for it's slow-moving timelines and bog-standard technology needs. Tech is usually "behind the curve", but that's okay! You don't need to be an expert in the latest frameworks here.
- Usually the tech is built around a few core business apps, knowing the gotchas and quirks of these is half the job.
- WLB is great, the industry is full of professionals who "just want to get the job done".
- Great job security. Many types of insurance products are legally required by the government and the industry is fairly recession resilient. Mass layoffs are pretty rare.
- You won't get FAANG level comp, but the major carriers can have competitive pay at upper levels.
- The industry is close knit and domain knowledge is easily transferable. You can find a new job pretty quickly in my experience, often by leveraging your network rather than cold-applyling.
People say it's boring, but I actually find the industry quite dynamic and fun. There are so many types of insurance, it's such an essential and pro-social financial product (risk hedging feels a lot more ethical than lending imo).
This is your target, if you want to do the minimum and wow people but the "wow" is equally lackluster.
If one thing was going to get me (and possibly you) to leave, it would be a company of similar standing (how users interact with the product, amount of public users or private clients, type of product) offering the ideal tech stack for me (you).
Good luck though. Very interested in how you proceed if you decide to make a change
PS - sorry not so much advice as a generic "same here"
That said, I view money now as a way to buy my own disability accommodations. Not everyone has that need.
There you will find many people seriously impressed with what your low-effort output can produce -- and the best part is that if you choose the related field carefully, you might be substantially helping the lives of people in your country or local area.
Be it health, agriculture, utilities, or some other field, there's likely to be heaps of problems that technology and modern computing are yet to touch. However, the caveat is that often these organisations and their systems are resilient to change -- that's my friendly way of saying they won't want to buy you a computer that can run python, and if you produce code they might be a bit scared to put it in 'production' somewhere.
But if you're brave and a little persistent, your changes can have a real positive impact, and you'll not be working anywhere near as hard/stressfully as an area that understands technology.
Generally speaking, there is room for a tonne of flexibility in public service for technical experts, because they are rare and valuable.
Leaving behind FAANG compensation will be much more difficult if you take work at a private firm (especially a profitable one), but working for the public you will know your wages are paid by taxation and the contributions of many hard working people -- I think this might help a lot.
but seriously if you want to leave FAANG then just leave. there are many things one can do in life and maybe consider software might not be the thing you want to do. like if you didn’t need money and had housing. what would you do?
life is short and i did the sea change now life is so f’ing refreshing. wake up do work on the land. go fishing at night. do some computer stuff to make money but it isn’t my identity anymore.
bush/commune camping with a bunch of hippies i realised that having skills in computers is utterly useless skill in the world vs say knowing how to weld or lead a drum circle. computers are useful for business/making money but like if you wanna be useful in the world… what skills are relevant and in demand? not for money but for trade. go learn that stuff. you may just find your burnout problems magically melt away and a love for computers comes back (or not!)
Have you considered telling this to these "senior members"? I.e "I want to remain an IC. I don't want to be a TL".
I'm assuming OP is L5, which does require "people influencing", although no formal leadership and or TL role is required. You can stay at this level indefinitely.
OP, is your manager ok with your current performance? Is your EM trying to grow you for promo or into the full level reqs? You should seek clarity here and if the former set boundaries/expectations as per the parent comment.
> But now I'm struggling to find motivation to do my work Is this recent? I'm seeing this quite a bit with the current job insecurity and turmoil at the company. As other comments have advocated: therapy and consider extended leave or a team switch. FWIW I don't think lower stakes work is going to fix your motivation, something you care about may.
I don't understand how it's hard to give up the FAANG compensation. Do you want money for the sake of having more money? Personally, I want money to enable me to do things that I want to do in life, which are the things I listed above. Once I had enough I stopped trying to get more.
OP lacks motivation to do anything and wants to do "minimal work", "low stakes" and you are suggesting startups ? They will be found out in no time even if hired. With startups, there is no such thing as "minimal work". If anything, pressure will be more than FAANGs with much less benefits and comp.
I was coming at it more from the angle of Big Co can be pretty de-energizing, whereas at a startup it can be easier to build the energy because there's so much actually impactful stuff to be done, vs. sweating out "impact" for your perf review.
I say that because whereas I work where I want, there are a number of folks I interact with who drag themselves to jobs they hate because they "can't" leave the comp. Sometimes they really have ratcheted up their COL quite high, and other times it is just too much of blow to imagine their salary cut in half. I'll share my experience of a series of paycuts for ever more interesting work, and the satisfaction that resulted, but it usually doesn't seem to resonate.
Basically the math works like this, if your cost of living is 200% US average (San Fran, LA, NYC are there or higher) and you move to a 96% US average your salary might drop 50% but you are still making the same amount of money essentially. In reality it might drop 30% so you will be getting a raise.
Then you can do things like own a house for $100k or less.
I have 4 kids, in Silicon Valley I would need $1.2M to buy a 4-bedroom house (2018 average). Where I live, I own two 5-bedroom houses for a total of $240K. So now I have secondary income and my taxes are much lower than the $1.2M house taxes. This thing kind of cascades let's say you put $200K down for your $1.2M house, so $1M loan also means your 4% interest will be a lot more money than my 4% interest rate. Your school taxes, and property taxes would be much more $ as well.
All that money has to come from somewhere. Does it mean your 401K % contribution is lower? Does it mean that if you do retire with twice as much money in retirement you will be spending all the profits paying your taxes? Maybe, maybe not.
I think that's kind of impossible to predict clearly what's more beneficial. For me I rather have my houses fully paid by the time I retire, I'm trending to have paid both of them off in about 8-10 years. I'm putting 13% to 401K, 6% in IRA and living a comfortable life. Would I have 4 kids if I living in NYC or the Valley? Definitely not.
I'm not trying to argue that my way is the best way. Just that it's just "a way", an alternative for someone that is tired of working in FAANG and wants something else.
FWIW, USDS has let a number of senior/staff ICs from companies whose name rhymes with "frugal" do very short stints (3-4 months).
First, make sure you don't have too many personal belongings in the office. There's always a chance they'll walk you out of the building on the spot.
Second, tell your manager that you think it's time for a change in your life, and you plan to move on from the company. Your manager probably has an "unregretted attrition" target, so they're unlikely to object to a 2-week notice period if they aren't spiteful.
You will take a big salary hit - make your peace with not owning a downtown penthouse by age 40 - but you probably have enough of a cushion to spend 6-12 months taking stock of your life and goals.
It's not so bad.
And unless the OP was on a performance plan or in a lower bucket of ratings (which doesn't sound like it's the case as they're being asked to become a TL), they would not be counted as "unregretted attrition".
It's very possible that you'd be perfectly happy on less comp, in a role that's more fulfilling. IME, this is a fact that people realize 4ish years into a high-earning career.
For me, I realized that being happy every day is immeasurably more important to me than making a marginal pre-tax $150k/year, and that the FAANG environments are intentionally designed to be incompatible with what brings me happiness, day-to-day. YMMV.
What's NIH?
Your google skills are applicable, you’ll just need to squint and cock your head a bit. Most of the industry standard tools are clones of google internal tools so you’ll recognize them. You’ll need to swap some nouns but the concepts are the same.
You don’t need to coast, you need to get their boot off your neck.
Find a startup doing something interesting and apply. If you’re willing to take a risk I’m sure lots of places would be happy to have you.
Out in the real world you’ll find your motivation and vision again.
Furthermore, these engineers get every second Friday off (common practice at many DOD firms). Just something to consider.
I would probably start looking at something in IT, infra, or internal tooling. Even something like compilers or whatever where you can more focus on iterating and improving an existing codebase.
“Frugal” salary band should allow you to still live a comfortable life. Perhaps you will save a bit less. That’s ok, you want to leave anyway and you will earn less in any other place. You will also become ineligible for future promotions. What do you care, you want to leave anyway.
Now use that extra time to find your next thing. Do interviews, or bootstrap your own thing if that’s what motivates you. Be careful with IP and noncompetes.
Didn't regret it for a moment.
My advice is to just fire some CVs, do some interviews, and see if any of the offers you will eventually get make sense for you, in terms of the ratio of Compensation vs. Responsibility. While you are still employed, you can always refuse offers.
And now it's time to throw this account away. Cya.
Can you please redo sky.google.com? I want it to have the features of Stellarium Web, with JWST photos, and also include "See a satellite" features.
james.darpinian.com/satellites
This would impress everyone. Good luck on your decision!
Also a controversial opinion. I feel in life where you don't have to worry about the base of Maslows hierarchy ( food, rent, clothing) people start making up non-existent problems out of thin air just to feel human again.
To be honest I'm kind of surprised programmers like this work at frugal
Sounds like you need to decide what are your priorities first? I.e. choose between money, time, or anything in between (part time, sabbatical, etc). Then, commit and act.
If you want to be a little IC cog in the machine and build what you’re told, stay at big corps.
:qw
... Please talk to someone and get some help.
